2006

www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/07/42/contents.html

2007

www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/08/46/contents.html

2008

I attended several film festivals again in 2008: Sundance, EbertFest (in Champaign, IL), Hong Kong, Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato, Galway, CineCon (Los Angeles), Vancouver, Chicago, AFIFest (Los Angeles), and the Bahamas. Following are some of the highlights:

Movies

Best New International Films

1. The Edge of Heaven (Galway) Fatih Akin’s moving tale about the not-quite-intersecting lives of a group of people traveling between Germany and Turkey. Postmodern trappings are here exploited to express profoundly human themes.

2. Lust, Caution (Hong Kong) A man, a woman, and a social cataclysm. Ang Lee’s best film to date looks at the way in which powerful sexual drives can be twisted into unaccustomed shapes by the bitter political exigencies of World War II China.

3. In Bruges (Sundance) In his debut as a filmmaker, playwright Martin McDonagh makes impish use of a resonant setting as background for a Boschian tale of violence and redemption. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star.

4. Hunger (Chicago) The hunger strike mounted by the IRA’s Bobby Sands while imprisoned in the 1980s forms the basis for this masterful docudrama by video artist and first-time feature filmmaker Steve McQueen. The sight of actor Michael Fassbender’s naked skeletal frame as we witness Sands slowly dying of starvation is a spectacle not easily forgotten. Fierce, uncompromising and very hard to watch.

5. Gomorrah (Chicago) Are Italian slum dwellers more bereft of hope than those in the U.S.? Matteo Garrone’s hard-edged study of life in the housing projects south of Naples makes a strong case that they are. The mobsters don’t help matters.

6. Four Nights With Anna (Chicago) A uniquely Polish take on absurdist storytelling from legendary helmer Jerzy Skolimoski. The story follows a lumpen workman as he courts his would-be bride by breaking into her bedroom at night as she sleeps.

7. Lake Tahoe (AFIFest) Fernand Eimbcke’s offbeat and whimsical exercise in minimalism chronicles the doings of a young Mexican boy after he has run his car into a telephone pole.

8. Wendy and Lucy (AFIFest) Another minimalist study, this one about a young woman (Michelle Williams) who loses her dog en route to Alaska. From American indie director Kelly Reichardt.

9. Happy-Go-Lucky (Chicago) Mike Leigh applies his signature improvisatory style to an uncharacteristically upbeat portrait of a constitutionally cheery elementary school teacher, played with infectious exuberance by Sally Hawkins.

10. Ballast (Vancouver) Lance Hammer crafts a bleak visual poem out of the struggles of a poor black family in the Missisippi delta.

Runners-Up: Tokyo Sonata (AFIFest), Lion’s Den (AFIFest), La France (Hong Kong), Mad Detective (Hong Kong)

Best Revivals/Restorations

1. The Great Consoler (Bologna) Lev Kuleshov shows up as a master of evocative sound in this 1933 adaptation of two O. Henry stories.

2. Underworld (EbertFest) Ben Hecht was reportedly livid at what Josef von Sternberg did to his gangster story script, making jealousy rather than ambition the source of the mayhem. Sternberg supplied his usual visually stunning set pieces for this 1927 production; the party scene, in particular, is a tour-de-force.

3. Les Nouveau Monsieurs (Pordenone) Jacques Feyder’s audacious 1929 portrait of jazz age Parisian morality is marked by sophistication, elegance and wit.

FESTIVAL AWARDS

Best Retrospective: Josef Von Sternberg (Bologna)

Best Live Musical Accompaniments:

1. The Alloy Orchestra’s stirring performance of its own music at the screening of Underworld during EbertFest.

2. Neil Brand’s accomplished score for the silent version of Hitchcock’s Blackmail, played by the Orchestra del Teatro Communale under the direction of Timothy Brock in the Piazza Maggiore, Bologna.

3. The musical backing for a program of early European avant-garde films screened at Bologna. Original scores by Camille Saint-Saëns (The Assassination of the Duc de Guise), Max Butting (Walther Ruttmann’s Opus 1), George Antheil (Fernand Léger’s Ballet Mécanique) , and Eric Sati (René Clair’s Entr’acte) were featured along with J S. Bach’s 3^rd “Brandenburg Concerto,” which backed Otto Fischinger’s Motion Painting N. 1. Again played by the the Orchestra del Teatro Communale under the direction of Timothy Brock in Bologna’s central plaza.

Best Fest Venue: Arclight (AFIFest)

Most Beautifully Restored Theaters: Egyptian (CineCon), Grauman’s Chinese (AFIFest)

Best Outdoor Screenings: Bologna (Piazza Maggiore)

Cutest Fest Logo: Bahamas

Best Filmmaker Attendance: AFIFest

Best Program Notes: Pordenone

Most Beautiful Surroundings: Sundance, Hong Kong, Bologna, Galway, Vancouver, Pordenone, Bahamas

2009

www.sensesofcinema.com/2010/feature-articles/2009-world-poll/#84

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